Quotes About Work

I might finish writing at two or three A.M., then have to leave at eight the next morning to get back to my job at NBC on time," Alex recalls. It was a busy period. After

Craftsmen like Furrer tackle professional challenges that are simple to define but difficult to execute—a useful imbalance when seeking purpose. Knowledge work exchanges this clarity for ambiguity. It can be hard to define exactly what a given knowledge worker does and how it differs from another: On our worst days, it can seem that all knowledge work boils down to the same exhausting roil of e-mails and PowerPoint,

The narratives in this book are bound by a common thread: the importance of ability. The things that make a great job great, I discovered, are rare and valuable. If you want them in your working life, you need something rare and valuable to offer in return. In other words, you need to be good at something before you can expect a good job.

Reason #3: The Work That Evening Downtime Replaces Is Usually Not That Important

Drukheid als Alibi voor Productiviteit: Bij afwezigheid van duidelijke maatstaven voor de productiviteit en de waarde in hun werk keren veel kenniswerkers terug naar een industrieel ijkpunt voor productiviteit: veel dingen heel zichtbaar doen.

There's no one correct deep work ritual—the right fit depends on both the person and the type of project pursued.

Activities that can seem like work actually offer multiple levels of benefits. [...] because it is very different than working on a computer ... it requires problem solving, but in a different way.

he came to realize a simple truth: Working right trumps finding the right work. He didn't need to have a perfect job to find occupational happiness—he needed instead a better approach to the work already available to him.

This includes, crucially, checking e-mail, as well as browsing work-related websites. In both cases, even a brief intrusion of work can generate a self-reinforcing stream of distraction that impedes the shutdown advantages described earlier for a long time to follow (most people are familiar, for example, with the experience of glancing at an alarming e-mail on a Saturday morning and then having its implications haunt your thoughts for the rest of the weekend).

Telling someone to "follow their passion" is not just an act of innocent optimism, but potentially the foundation for a career riddled with confusion and angst.

you do instead? It contended that the traits that define great work are rare and valuable. If you want these traits in your own life, you need rare and valuable skills to offer in return. I called these rare and valuable skills career capital, and noted that the foundation of constructing work you love is acquiring a large store of this capital.

Don't Take Breaks from Distraction. Instead Take Breaks from Focus.

The implication of these findings is clear. In work (and especially knowledge work), to increase the time you spend in a state of depth is to leverage the complex machinery of the human brain in a way that for several different neurological reasons maximizes the meaning and satisfaction you'll associate with your working life.

In an age of network tools, in other words, knowledge workers increasingly replace deep work with the shallow alternative—constantly sending and receiving e-mail messages like human network routers, with frequent breaks for quick hits of distraction.

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In which I argue that control over what you do, and how you do it, is one of the most powerful traits you can acquire when creating work you love.

The goal of the machine," David explained, "is to create a setting where the users can get into a state of deep human flourishing—creating work that's at the absolute extent of their personal abilities." It is, in other words, a space designed for the sole purpose of enabling the deepest possible deep work. I was, as you might expect, intrigued.

Let's pull together the threads spun so far: Current economic thinking, as I've surveyed, argues that the unprecedented growth and impact of technology are creating a massive restructuring of our economy. In this new economy, three groups will have a particular advantage: those who can work well and creatively with intelligent machines, those who are the best at what they do, and those with access to capital.

interruption, even if short, delays the total time required to complete a task by a significant fraction.

when you switch from some Task A to another Task B, your attention doesn't immediately follow—a residue of your attention remains stuck thinking about the original task. This residue gets especially thick if your work on Task A was unbounded and of low intensity before you switched, but even if you finish Task A before moving on, your attention remains divided for a while.

Csikszentmihalyi even goes so far as to argue that modern companies should embrace this reality, suggesting that "jobs should be redesigned so that they resemble as closely as possible flow activities.

How you'll support your work.

I'll call this output-centric approach to work the craftsman mindset. My

For example, you might institute a ban on any Internet use,